GETIDOS - Getting things done sustainably
Theory, empirical basis and potential of social entrepreneurship for sustainable development
In 2000 the United Nations put forward the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) to meet the social-ecological challenges of the new Millenium. Under MDG 7 (environmental sustainability), the 189 member states made a commitment to reduce by half the proportion of people without adequate access to clean drinking water and sanitation by 2015. However, current forecasts indicate that national and international institutions and their policy instruments will not be able to attain the goal, and especially not in the regions that are exposed to the most severe water crisis, i.e. sub-Sahara Africa, (South)East-Asia and the MENA.
In this situation, the rapidly growing group of social entrepreneurs promises new problem-solving capacity. According to Ashoka, a leading international social entrepreneurship organization, these actors develop innovative solutions for particularly pressing societal needs. They use scaling and replication of their innovations as means for societal change. They are active at the crossroads of states, markets and civil society.
“Every drop counts!” In response to water scarcity and climate change, social entrepreneur Michal Kravcik has developed a new, integrated water paradigm that stresses the eco-systemic role of water and the power of decentralized, social structures.
GETIDOS goals:
For the advancement of sustainable water management GETIDOS, in collaboration with social entrepreneurs, has set itself the following goals:
- to provide a knowledge base on social entrepreneurship initiatives in the water sector worldwide, including an online available water map
- to develop a social-ecological approach for the evaluation of social entrepreneurship initiatives in this sector (drawing on disciplinary input from ecology, environmental engineering, management science, philosophy and political science)
- to support selected social entrepreneurs in the development of the scientific dimensions of their innovations, including their replication and/or scaling
- to create a platform for sustainability oriented social entrepreneurship education, including a collaborative competition
GETIDOS is sponsored in the context of the program Social-ecological Research (SÖF) of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
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